At last, air monitor set to test for lead near military open burn site

Virginia environment officials say they will soon begin monitoring the air near a public elementary school outside the town of Radford amid concerns that pollution from an Army weapons plant there is endangering people’s health.

For the first time in the more than 65 years since the facility, the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, began burning hazardous explosives and other waste without environmental controls, the monitoring will measure how much lead reaches the surrounding community. Officials may add the capability to measure arsenic, chromium and other pollutants as well.

In July, ProPublica reported that open burning of hazardous waste was standard practice at U.S. military facilities despite the fact it has been banned by law for years at almost every other type of industrial operation. The Radford plant is just one of at least 51 military sites across the country where dangerous materials are burned on a regular basis, according to documents obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency and reported by ProPublica.

The Department of Defense and environmental regulators have insisted that the burns are safe, but those assurances have relied on computer models to estimate the pollution and officials had never measured the actual emissions — either at the burn sites within the boundaries of the military bases, or in the surrounding civilian residential areas.

According to the federal toxic release inventory, the Radford plant is the single largest polluter in Virginia, responsible for millions of pounds of toxic chemicals every year. Some who live near Radford fear that the pollution has contributed to poor health in the region, including unusually high rates of thyroid disease and elevated rates of cancer in the surrounding counties.

But the health links have never been studied and no measures have ever been taken of the reach of the actual pollution from the plant.